Hell’s Bells: Turkey is going backward

The survey confirmed the existence of a persistent anti-American mindset among Turks even more than Iranians despite the Obama factor. While the US president has continued to score well among European publics, his approval rating in Turkey has slumped to 28% from 50% last year.

The annual Transatlantic Trends survey was conducted in 11 EU countries, the US and Turkey, by the institution called The German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Over the past five years, according to the poll, Turkish support for joining the EU has halved to 38%, while only a quarter of Turks now expect their country to join the union one day.

Four in five Europeans and even more Americans were concerned about a nuclear-armed Iran, compared with 39% of Turks. Two in three Americans and 43% of Europeans supported military strikes against Tehran as a last resort, while only 13% of Turks supported the war option – more than half said Iranian nuclear weapons were acceptable.